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Razr vs. Blade: Cloning Is Only Skin Deep

THEY say that looks aren't everything, but don't tell Motorola. Its breathtakingly beautiful Razr is the world's best-selling cellphone.

In just one year, this ultrathin metal slab has attained almost iPod-like popularity; 12 million people are now slipping Razr phones in and out of their pockets. You can buy the Razr in black, silver, pink or blue (for about $150), and there's more to come.

"The year of 2005 was the Razr," says Edward J. Zander, Motorola's chief executive, "and the year of 2006 is more Razrs."

All right, we get the idea. Thin is in.

Other cellphone companies get the idea, too. In fact, Samsung has already come up with a Razr clone, nicknamed the Blade. (Its official name is the A900. It's offered only by Sprint, for $200, although a Verizon edition is reported to be in the works.)

Whereas the Razr is a flat, rectangular, high-fashion flip phone, the Blade is a flat, rectangular, high-fashion flip phone. The dimensions are identical, too: 3.9 by 2 inches, and about a half-inch thick when closed. Both feel satisfying and James Bondian in your palm, and both snap shut with the cushioned click of a Lexus car door.

Each has a camera, a speakerphone, Bluetooth wireless capability, a totally flat keypad, crystal-clear and extremely loud ringers, a big color screen inside and a postage-stamp-size screen on the outside.

The phones are similar in their limitations, too. Neither has a Silence All keystroke for use in boardrooms, theaters or churches; you have to work the Volume Down key all the way to zero through the volume settings. The vibrate mode is so feeble, one layer of pocket fabric blocks it from your nerve endings.

FINALLY, skinny little phones have skinny little batteries. The Blade dies after three hours of talking, or less. The Razr's life is longer, but still not nearly what its Web site says ("seven hours"). Truth is, you'll probably have to charge either phone at least once a day.

But there are differences between the Razr and the Blade. Man, are there differences.

The Razr, you see, may be the pinnacle of physical beauty. (The Blade is a hair less spectacular looking. Its designers, or perhaps its lawyers, stopped short of copying one particular bit of Motorola's design: the Razr's top is shorter than the bottom, so it nestles against a raised bottom lip when closed.)

But the Razr's software quickly becomes the bane of its owner's existence. If you're used to the logical layout of, say, a Samsung or LG Electronics phone, this Razr will nick you badly.

The stratospherically stupid address book, for example, can handle only one phone number for each person. You must create separate entries for "Mom home," "Mom work," "Mom cell" and so on. (Hello, Moto? We're not in 1970 anymore.)

And if several friends' names begin with the same letter, you can't type SY to highlight Sylvia; that would be too obvious. Instead, pressing S takes you to the beginning of the S's. Then you have to walk through them all with the arrow key until you reach Sylvia. (Moto added a Search dialog box in some versions of the software, but it's still clunky.)

Worse, the Razr actually has two address books: one in the phone and another on the internal account-information card. Good luck trying to figure out why you can't associate ringer sounds, photos or one-digit speed-dial keys with certain contacts. (It's because they're on the card list but not the phone list.)

On most phones, tapping the Talk button summons your All Calls list -- every incoming, outgoing or missed call. The Razr, though, keeps separate logs for incoming and outgoing calls. So if you want to call Carl back, you have to remember whether he called you or you called him.

The Samsung phone's software avoids these pitfalls and many more. Its menu items are numbered, so you can just press 7 (or whatever) instead of walking down long lists with the arrow keys. Similarly, once you've opened a secondary menu, you can press the arrow keys to view other secondary menus, without first having to backtrack "up the tree" to the main menu.

You can reprogram the buttons on both phones, including the two "soft keys" (unlabeled buttons whose functions are identified on the screen) on the Home screen. But if you decide to dedicate a soft key to the address book -- a natural choice -- guess what you'll see on the Razr? "Address Bo." That's all that fits.

Instant messagers should note, too, that the Razr's iTap predictive-text input method is much slower than the T9 method of most phones. Actually, just about every function requires more button taps on the Razr than on the Samsung.

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One crucial reason is that the Samsung has a physical Back button. The Razr, on the other hand, must devote one of its two soft-key functions to a Back function at every step, wasting a spot that could have listed a more valuable option.

Then there are the hardware differences. Samsung, the follower, had many months to study the Razr and improve on it. The camera lens, for example, rotates on the phone's hinge barrel for ease in capturing angled shots, and there's even an L.E.D. "flash" with a four-foot range.

The Blade also records videos up to an hour long. The Razr, meanwhile, records 15-second videos, 7-second videos or none at all, depending on which version of its software you have.

(Reviewing the Razr is tricky, because each of its three carriers -- Verizon, Cingular and T-Mobile -- has a slightly different version, and even then the specs change periodically. For example, the Samsung and Verizon's enhanced Razr take 1.3-megapixel photos; the Cingular and T-Mobile Razrs take measly 0.3-megapixel shots. Verizon also says that its Razr has a one-touch All Calls list, multiple phone numbers for each contact, and type-selection of names in the address book. This review is based on the latest Cingular Razr.)

The Samsung is also highly voice-commandable, which is commendable. If you say, "Call Bill Gates mobile," for example, the phone dials for you. This feature is not only for safety (because you can keep your eyes on the road), but also for convenience.

You can also check battery life, check signal strength or open programs by voice. You can even dictate text messages rather than tapping them out -- yes, actual speech-transcription software is built in, although its accuracy leaves much to be desired.

For additional monthly fees, the Samsung is also capable of astonishing multimedia feats. Its tiny stereo speakers can blast out music from Sirius satellite radio, Rhapsody Radio, or songs downloaded directly from Sprint's music store (ludicrously overpriced at $2.50 a song). Thanks to Sprint's high-speed Internet service, you can even watch cable TV channels with a smooth, uninterrupted picture.

When connected by Bluetooth or a cable, both the Razr and the Blade let your laptop get onto the Internet from just about anywhere. But Sprint's high-speed network makes this setup far more enjoyable.

So is the Blade's superiority over the Razr a slam-dunk? Not quite. Along with all of its features, Samsung's attempt at geek chic is accompanied by a few big bummers.

One is the carrier: it's Sprint. If there's no Sprint coverage where you live, that's the end of the story.

The second glitch is the external screen: it can't show photos. It doesn't show you the picture of incoming callers the way the Razr does, and it doesn't let your model see the photo you're about to snap.

The third problem is storage. Neither phone has a removable memory card. The Blade has only 47 megabytes for all your pictures, movies and music; you'll be lucky to fit one CD's worth of music in that. True, the Razr's 5 megs is even worse, but then, that phone isn't marketed as a multimedia machine.

The Blade, on the other hand, has physical buttons on the outside of the shell for Play/Pause, Next Song and Previous Song.

Despite these frustrations, the Samsung A900 offers 90 percent of the Razr's design wow factor, but with software that's infinitely more thoughtful and efficient. (And a manual to match. The Razr's manual is a horror show, filled with baffling terminology like "incoming call alert" when it means "ringer.")

In phones, as in people, looks are important -- in getting your attention. But for a happy long-term relationship, it's the software design that counts.